


A Hat For Alice

by Blazonix



Series: The Path to Wonderland [2]
Category: Alice In Wonderland - Lewis Carroll, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Dissociation, F/M, Sequel, Unhappy marriage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-02
Updated: 2021-03-02
Packaged: 2021-03-14 18:13:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29795865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blazonix/pseuds/Blazonix
Summary: There is no Wonderland without Alice, and there is no Alice without the Mad Hatter. The pink bundle is placed into his arms, and he thinks,oh no.Sequel to Tea With Alice
Relationships: Harry Potter & Lily Luna Potter, Harry Potter/Ginny Weasley, Luna Lovegood & Harry Potter
Series: The Path to Wonderland [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2190096
Comments: 2
Kudos: 24





	A Hat For Alice

It begins with a hat: covered in dust that shines like glitter under the light and resting innocently among stacks of faded, yellowed paper. The desk underneath, old-fashioned and stained, bears the weight like a pedestal to days gone by.

The skeleton sitting in the armchair is what concerns the Aurors most, but no one seems to realize a boney finger points to the hat behind it.

No one but him, that is.

He shudders the moment his eyes land onto the black top hat, and he contributes the feeling to remnants of the magic that kept the room hidden. He’s been in similar situations before, and in those cases, usually the old spells—too weak to do anything but finally give way—don’t fully break.

“Wands out,” he orders, more out of habit than anything else.

Their squad scans the room and comes up empty-handed on anything more dangerous than a jinxed deck of cards. It’s telling of a person, he thinks, that they carry around cards that randomly change when one looks away.

The Auror squad relaxes to a certain degree when nothing else is found.

“When Mrs. Morren floo’ed about a new room suddenly appearing in the basement, I can’t say I saw this coming,” someone mutters behind him.

They bag anything that might give them information on whomever left behind the skeleton. His eyes drift towards the hat. There could be a name attached to it.

A shiver racks his spine the moment his hand touches the fabric of the hat. Magic can sure be stubborn. Running a finger over the wide brim, he finds himself wondering how it would look on him. Much better than a pointy cap, he’s sure.

The only piece of writing he finds is a price tag proclaiming “In this style 10/6.” He takes the hat with him as evidence anyway.

When nothing turns up, he keeps the hat in his study on a stand he found in a garage sale, but only after extensive testing is done to it. Even if he can’t feel something bewitching him, it’s better to be safe than sorry.

“Harry, mate, throw that rubbish away. It’s probably cursed,” Ron warns him.

“No way, even Hermione gave it the all clear,” he dismisses with barely a thought.

He should have listened; the hat _is_ cursed.

One night, when Ginny’s nagging and his boys’ youthful screams get to be too much, he sneaks into his study and bolts the door. He settles down with a cup of tea, leans back in his chair, and on a whim, plops the hat on top of his head.

From there, he’s stuck having tea with Alice in the garden at 6 o’clock every day, all day.

(“Welcome to Wonderland,” the cat mocks him with a pointy grin, fading away one stripe at a time.

That’s all the warning he gets before he’s nearly crushed under the weight of Wonderland itself. Of madness and something far older than the earth.

His battle against the rules—the invisible chains that hold him down—ends in a loss, and a companion assigned to him, the March Hare, decides that death is better than this. Whose death remains unclear, but it ends with the poor bunny-eared bloke’s.

Time, furious at the attempt to kill him, makes it so that the Mad Hatter and the Dormouse can no longer leave the garden.

“Welcome to Wonderland, Alice,” he says through gritted teeth as the rules demand him to.)

When Luna comes for him, his first thought is one of denial. He must have finally lost it completely to hallucinate Alice as one of his closest friends.

“Welcome, Alice,” he tries to say.

Except he can’t say the words, so all he can do is smile. A sudden stinging pain shoots through his eyes, and his lips tremble.

“Sorry I’m late,” Luna says before throwing around spells that transfigures the dream-like garden into one of her own design.

 _This is real. I’m here. Time to wake up, Harry_.

Luna blows away the nightmare and reassures him in one fell swoop. He cries into her arms in a way he never had before.

She takes him by the hand and leads him through the garden gate.

He goes home.

The study is how he left it; papers are stacked haphazardly, the chair remains pulled out from the desk, and even his cup of tea is still steaming slightly from the cup’s warming charm.

He smashes the cup of tea against the wall. Luna squeezes his hand before leaving to make him a cup of coffee. By the time she returns, he’s upended most of his study in a fit of rage. The only thing is—

Despite his best attempts to light the hat on fire, his wand doesn’t shoot out so much as a spark.

“Why can’t I get rid of this thing?” He whispers as he places the top hat into a trunk designed to hold only the darkest of enchanted items.

“Because it’s your hat, Harry,” Luna says as if it’s obvious.

Depressingly, no one seems to have missed him. A week has passed, but not even Ginny seems to have noticed his disappearance. His boys simply act like he’s already seen them off to bed for the night.

“Don’t be angry at them. I didn’t notice either until a blue butterfly dropped off a letter,” Luna tells him.

His fingers clutch his wand until his skin turns bone white, but he can say nothing to that.

Any attempts to make someone realize that, no, he hasn’t been around causes them to reset the conversation in a disturbing way: their faces go blank, and they repeat their words until he chooses a new topic.

There’s not much to be done about it, so he decides to let it go. Only thing is, the hat doesn’t appear to feel the same way. It shows up on his desk every evening at 6 o’clock, and he can almost feel its glare whenever he enters the room with coffee in hand.

(More worrying than having to lock the blasted thing back up every night is that he doesn’t actually seem to mind the hat’s escape attempts.)

He tries to go back to what his life was like before, but Wonderland left its mark; it becomes more apparent with time.

“Potter,” someone calls him.

 _Hatter_ , is what he hears.

“Heard you’ve been cursed with a tea allergy. Sorry to hear that.” It’s said with sympathy even as he’s given a stack of files to look at.

“These things happen,” is what he says instead of the truth; that he drinks coffee because tea gives him nightmares.

It takes all his effort to eat cake, biscuits, or pie, and he dresses only in wizard robes. He avoids old-fashioned suits with a vengeance.

More embarrassing to admit is that he’s now unable to look at the watch Molly gave him for his 17th birthday. He nearly faints when Ginny shows him a catalogue of pocket watches for the boys.

(There’s nothing wrong with Apparating as far as possible from a grinning cat though. On that, he’ll stand his ground.)

Settling down back down into being an Auror from nine-to-five and coming home to his wife and children is difficult. There’s a disconnect between his brain and his body, and he feels like he’s simply going through the motions.

The only time he feels alive is through the thrill of dealing with unknown situations. Even then, if it doesn’t escalate into something dangerous, that feeling of numbness comes back.

“This world is having a hard time adapting you into it,” Luna explains to him after he vents about it over lunch. “You’re not fully here.”

“Did you know having a normal life was all I ever dreamed of?” He can’t help but laugh.

Eating with Luna is a daily ritual. She doesn’t judge him for his coffee or his sudden fear of cat teeth and pocket watches. Being with her is like sitting beside a lit fireplace on a cold day.

More than that, she’s the only one who knew to miss him, the only one who knows why he’s going ever so slightly mad.

Spending time with Luna helps him stay grounded.

( _Tea_ with _Alice_ , something inside him chants.)

Of course, no matter how he assures her, Ginny grows suspicious that he’s having an affair, but any time he tries to explain himself, she goes blank-faced and stupid. It hurts even though he tells himself that Ginny’s suspicions are reasonable.

 _If we’re drifting apart, it’s because I’m no longer the man you married,_ he doesn’t say, can’t say. Ginny hears him anyway, and in an effort to latch tighter onto him, pressures him into having another child.

He is a Weasley both in his heart and in name. It’s all he ever wanted, so of course he agrees to it even as their marriage sinks to a new low.

(“But are either of you happy?” Luna asks when he stares too long into his coffee.)

Ginny becomes pregnant easily with the help of a few potions, and not long after, they find out the baby’s a girl. He doesn’t know why, but his heart nearly stops upon hearing it.

“How about naming her after family?” Ginny suggests.

Alice. Alice. Alice.

“Luna,” he says immediately.

It slips out by accident, but in retrospect, he has no regrets. They both consider Luna family, and she’s done a lot for them. It’s a good name.

Ginny’s face contorts for a moment before a strained smile replaces it, and he does his best to not notice.

“That will get confusing. Let’s make that her middle name,” Ginny says with forceful cheer. “I know, what about after your mum? Lily.”

“Lily Luna Potter,” he tests out.

 _Alice_.

Despite her hopes, Ginny and he don’t grow much closer upon the baby’s birth. He loves little Lily Luna, can barely stand to give her back to her mother, but there’s not much going on between them besides caring for the children.

In fact, things become strained once more after it becomes obvious that he favors Lily over James and Albus.

He wants to deny that his love for his children differs, but he can’t. Little Lily Luna makes him want to grab the stars from the sky and hang them in her bedroom. Her beaming smile makes it impossible for him to be anything but happy when she hands him a drawing of their family on the back of a priceless photo.

When she takes him by the hand and makes him sit beside a stuffed rabbit for a tea party—not even then does he fault her.

He lives in denial on why he is so besotted with his only daughter for many years. It’s not until she is six and favoring blue dresses that it all comes out.

“Daddy, today I saw a white rabbit,” Lily tells him when gets home from work. “It was wearing clothes and talking to itself—Daddy, what’s wrong?”

Scooping up Lily into his arms, he makes for the fireplace. He stumbles into Luna’s living room as pale as death. She’s already there, waiting on the sofa with a cup of coffee. Lorcan and Lysander, Luna’s young twin boys, sit by her feet; they stare at Lily as if mesmerized.

“It’s too late, but it will be okay,” Luna says when he turns pleading eyes towards her.

He grabs onto the words like a lifeline.

“It’s going to be okay,” he whispers into Lily’s hair. “It’s going to be okay.”

Lily squirms in confusion before wrapping her tiny arms around his neck. She only allows him a minute to wallow before demanding to be put down so she can play with Lorcan and Lysander.

She’s definitely her mother’s daughter, he thinks.

Nothing happens again until Lily’s Hogwarts letter comes. They all knew Lily was a witch ever since she turned her tea set pink, but the confirmation still has their emotions all over the place, even James and Albus’.

“Baby sister’s growing up,” James says, pretending to cry.

“Don’t worry, you’ll do great wherever you end up!” Albus says urgently.

Ginny dotes on her last child still remaining at home, and the entire Weasley clan doesn’t stop celebrating. Lily smiles through it all while keeping her true thoughts to herself. Anytime she’s asked where she hopes to end up, she sticks out her tongue and says,

“I’d like to go somewhere, but anywhere leads to somewhere!”

Only he knows that she won’t be going to Hogwarts come September.

He takes to shrinking as many useful items as he can and stuffing them into her pockets. Jewelry with protective charms is always worn, and he keeps a tracker spell on the bow she likes to wear in her hair.

“Come on, Dad. Do I need all this?” Lily asks once he reorganizes her pockets into even more pockets.

“Yes,” he says with much certainty.

September 1st comes and Lily still remains as she always is: bratty with a twinge of cryptic and nonsensical. Her luggage is loaded up by her brothers, and the entire family takes a modified car to King’s Cross.

He almost, _almost_ believes that he’s overreacting. That Lily will make it to school and have a normal life there.

Her hand lets go of his before they make it to the barrier. The feeling of dread hits him like a bludger. He turns around, but there’s no sign of red hair or a blue dress. Ginny, ahead with the boys, doesn’t notice her daughter’s disappearance.

He scans the train station and glimpses a pointy grin before it disappears.

“Lily!” He cries, running into the throng of people.

Despite his desperate search, he knows exactly where she is. He knows there is no getting his little girl back. It doesn’t matter where or how long he looks for her; she’s gone.

Wonderland has taken his dear Lily Luna, transformed her into an Alice of her own making.

“I see Lily went on ahead.”

He whips around and Luna is there as always, patient and knowing. He barely keeps himself from grabbing her and demanding answers that he already has.

“Went on ahead?” He repeats, questioning and apprehensive.

“Well, you’re going after her, aren’t you?” She tilts her head, and his breath catches in his throat.

It’s not that he hasn’t thought of it, but he’s already lost one battle against the rules of Wonderland. He can’t think of a way around them.

“Remember the tale of the three brothers?” Luna’s silver eyes sparkle in the light. “The last brother Death couldn’t find. I imagine if he tried, Time couldn’t either.”

The invisibility cloak.

“Luna, you’re a treasure.” He kisses her forehead and disappears with a crack, Statute of Secrecy be damned.

He raids his room for a few items before storming into his study. Though it isn’t 6 o’clock yet, the hat waits on the desk for him. He spares it a glance before grabbing his field kit and stuffing it with potions.

A flick of the wand transforms his casual wear into a well-fitted suit. He puts on a pair of enchanted gloves before trading out his well-worn glasses for a pair of golden spectacles. The invisibility cloak settles onto his shoulders like an old friend, and he uses a pin to hold it in place.

Without hesitation, he picks the hat up and places it onto his head. Wonderland greets him with teeth bared wide. He tilts his hat into a precarious position and gives it a challenging stare.

Every Alice needs a Mad Hatter. He shouldn’t keep her waiting.

(His heart beats for the first time in years. _He’s home_.)

**Author's Note:**

> More story, less madness than the last. 
> 
> An important note: this is more of a possible sequel to Tea With Alice. I stand by the first story being what one makes of it.


End file.
